Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 59: Act, Ability, and the Nature of Badness

Transcript
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So it's an unmeasured or disordered act, huh? See, I'm always giving classes, you know, if the house is on fire, right? Direction and grab my books, and then if time, go back and get the baby? Or do I get the baby first, and then if time allows, go back and get the books? Well, they think, you know, I'm opposing that I go get the books first, right? But that would be a disordered act, right? A disordered love, right? Right, huh? Okay? Because the reason to save the baby is better than the books, right? And you should save the baby first, right? Okay, or if you eat too much or drink too much, right? So on, huh? This would be a, what? An act lacking in measure of reason, right? So, you know, that's morally bad, but notice the badness there consists in the act lacking what it's able to have, right? The order and measure of reason, and it should have, right? That's what the badness consists in, okay? Now, sometimes you use the word bad for something that is not just a lack, right? We can call bad, what has the lack, we can be said to have a lack, right? Okay, so if blindness is bad, then secondly, you could say it's bad to what? To be a blind man, right? Okay, but that's because blindness is bad, that's the fundamental meaning, right? And then a third meaning of bad would be for me to poke your eye, okay? Because that would cause you to be blind, right? Okay, but my poke in your eye is bad because it blinds you, and it's bad for you to be blind because blindness is bad, right? So the fundamental meaning of bad is a kind of, what? None being, huh? Okay? So Aristotle will see here in this tenth reading that act is better than ability, right? Okay, but ability is also good because it's capable of act, huh? Okay? Let's look a little bit at the reading ten here, huh? And Aristotle's way of showing this, you've got to be careful of it because if you misunderstand it, you won't see later on what the bad really is, okay? That the act is also better and more honorable than the good ability is clear from these things, and as you call it, whatever is said according to ability is capable of contraries. And he's talking about the ability to be and not to be, right? For example, it is the same which is able to be healthy and at the same time it could also have been sick, right? It can't be healthy and sick at the same time, but it's capable of both. For there is the same ability for being healthy and sick, for being at rest and in motion, for building and knocking down, for being built and falling down. The ability for contraries then exists at the same time, but contraries can exist at the same time, right? Okay? My body is able to be healthy or sick at the same time. What does that mean? Can't be both healthy and sick, right? Okay? But I could be healthy now or I could be, what? Sick now, right? I have an ability to be both of them, but not together. Okay, so he goes on to point that out. Therefore, while the good must be one of them, the ability is both alike or neither. The act, therefore, is better. Okay, let's kind of put that a little more clearly to see this one. Sometimes we make a little chart, you know? We say, okay, to be healthy and to be able to be healthy. To be able to be sick and to be sick. Now, to be healthy is good, right? To be sick is bad, right? But in a way, it's the same ability to be healthy and sick. So you might say that in the good, the act is better than the ability, right? Okay, but in the bad, the act is worse than the what? Ability, right? Okay? But in a way, the ability to be healthy and ability to be sick are the same, right? Okay? So can ability be as good as that? No. Because in some ways, it's an affinity to the bad, right? Because it's the same ability to be both, right? Now, but isn't to be sick equally as much an act as to be healthy? Well, this is where you've got to be careful now, right? Because strictly speaking, the bad, as I've mentioned already, is going to be seen to be a what? Negation. Negation, yeah, yeah, okay? And therefore, strictly speaking, it's not an act at all. Okay? Now, if you go back to the chapter on perfect, huh? Aristotle will speak of the three main senses of perfect and so on. But then he speaks of a kind of metaphorical sense, right? Okay? And he says people will say, you know, my house has been completely ruined. Okay? I'm completely ruined. He used the word complete, right? When he's now most incomplete, right? And I notice we have an expression, you know, when the car gets into an accident and so on, and we say sometimes the car has been totaled. Now, what the heck does that mean? Total comes from the word whole, right? As Aristotle points out, whole and privet mean almost the same thing, right? So why do you say when the car is kind of completely wrecked, that it's been totaled, you know? Well, it's a kind of a extremely metaphorical, extreme disinlikeness, right? It's just as when something is complete, it has all its parts, right? So when something has none of its parts, it's completely, what, ruined, right? It's kind of a strange way, right? But you don't want to say that it's really, what, strictly speaking, complete. You used it in a kind of metaphorical way, huh? And it's kind of funny this morning, I happened to be reading Thomas' commentary there on the fifth chapter, I think it was, of the epistle to the Romans, right? And there's one reading there, at the end, St. Paul says, I remember the Latin text there, that Adam is the forma futuri, the form of the future, right? And Thomas, what does he mean by saying this, right? Well, he's pointing out a certain likeness, huh? Between Adam and Christ, right? And there's several likenesses that Thomas points out, but the one that's been most prominent there is, that just as through one man sin and death entered into the world, right? So through one man, what? Redemption, right? Okay? What kind of likeness is that? Through one gave, what? Sin and death, right? And through that one, what? Redemption and life, resurrection, and so on, right? But in some way, there's a likeness of Adam to what? Yeah. In the sense that, just as Adam is the source of all our troubles, in a way, or the beginning, you might say, the source of all our troubles, Christ is the beginning of all our redemption, and all of our good, huh? You see? Do you see that? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, it's so good light, you know, if you say, it's so good light, you know, it's so good light, you know, that the human mind is able to be mistaken, okay? And then you say, well, is that an ability that God lacks? God is not able to be mistaken, is He? He can neither deceive nor be deceived, right? But man is able to be deceived, able to be mistaken. Is that really an ability? I'm kind of using the word almost metaphorically, right? Okay. Because maybe strictly speaking, the ability to be mistaken is a lack of ability, right? You see? But you have people get, you know, mixed up with these things, right? They think that man is more free than God because man is able to, what? Sin, right? You know? Does that make us more free than God? He lacks that freedom to sin? You see what I mean? So you've got to be careful here, right? Okay? Because although you could say, this is ability and this is act, right? The ability to be sick is ability, right? And to be actually sick is an act, right? Strictly speaking, to be sick is something bad, and therefore is a lack of an act, huh? It's something bad because it's lacking something it should have. You see what I mean? Okay. But I think Aristotle speaks this way because he wants to use this as a way of showing that in good things, the act is better than ability. Because the ability, in a way, is the same as the ability to be what? Bad, right? So it seems to have some affinity with, right? The bad, right? You see what I mean? Okay. It's closer to the bad, you might say, right? It's the ability to be healthy and the ability to be sick. They're not two different abilities, like the ability to walk and the ability to talk, right? I can walk and talk at the same time, right? I can walk and see at the same time, right? Because the ability to walk and the ability to see are two different abilities. I can see and hear at the same time, right? But I can't be healthy and sick at the same time, right? That's kind of a sign that they're not meeting two different abilities in the way that the ability to see and the ability to walk are two abilities. Even though we say, hey, let's say my argument. We know ability to act, right? And so if the acts are different, then the abilities are different. You might kind of think that, right? So the ability to walk and the ability to talk are different because to walk and to talk are different acts. Wasn't to be sick and to be healthy to different acts? You see? But then shouldn't the ability to be healthy and the ability to be sick be different abilities? And then why can't I be healthy and sick at the same time? Obviously, I can't be, right? And you said, let me think, now, hey, just a minute. What you have here is a strange kind of ability. An ability for what? An ability for contours, right? Okay. Yeah? Can't it be possibly related to partly the undergoings? Yeah. Would that be the reason why you can have the ability for both and not two abilities? Because to be sick and to be healthy and more like undergoings than to walk and to speak? Yeah, yeah. But they're opposed in a way that to walk and to talk are not opposed, right? Or to walk and to see are not opposed, right? So you realize that these are two possibilities of the same ability, right? And that's the reason why I can't be healthy and sick at the same time. Why I can walk and talk at the same time or walk and see at the same time. Okay? So if in a way it's the same ability, although described differently, right? The ability to be healthy and the ability to be sick, right? But if in a way it's the same ability, then the way the ability to be healthy is in a way the ability to be sick, too. And the ability to be sick has a certain connection with being sick, which is bad, right? Well, how can the ability be as good as that? It can't be, can it? There's no connection with being healthy and being sick, right? One excludes the other. But it seems to be the same thing in us that is able to be healthy and to be sick, right? Okay? And that goes back to, you know, the understanding of matter that you get in natural philosophy, too. So you say, for example, you have a piece of clay there in the shape of a sphere, and you mold it into a cube, and then maybe you mold it into a pyramid and so on, right? Well, does the clay have one ability whereby it's able to be a sphere, and another ability whereby it's able to be a cube, and another ability whereby it's able to be a pyramid? If these are really separate abilities in reality, then why can't it become a sphere and a cube and a pyramid at the same time, right? But it seems that it's one and the same ability for all of these, but not an ability to be all of these at once, but when you're one of them, you're able to be the other, right? But if you became the other, you would cease to be the former. You see? So you see the idea that that passive ability is in a way an ability for opposites. Okay? And therefore it's not cut off from the bad entirely, is it? So the ability to be healthy, in reality, in a way, is the same as the ability to be sick. Even though to be healthy, to be sick, are not the same thing, right? So this is more affinity to the bad, and therefore it can hardly be as good as it is to be, what? Healthy, right? You see? So, or take a different example than matter, but a little bit like it in our mind, because understanding the way is an undergoing too, right? And you say, well, I have an ability to know, and I have an ability to be, what? Mistaken, right, huh? And you take the slave boy in the mino there, right? And Socrates says to him, how do you double a square that you have? What would it be the side of the square twice as big? So you double the side, right? Well, he's mistaken, right? He doesn't realize it at first, but he's mistaken, right? Because if you double the side, you get a square actually four times as big, right? So a square two by two, you double the side, four by four, well, four by four is 16, and two by two is four, and 16 is not double, four. But at first the slave boy, well, it sounds reasonable, right? Double the side, you get twice as big a square, wouldn't you? Seems reasonable. So he's able to be mistaken, right? And he's actually mistaken. And I said, teacher, you know that students are able to be mistaken, right? And when I taught him the chapter on the meanings of the word before, right? I said, now later on in the course, you're going to mix up those meanings. And I know they will, right? Because later on in the course, you know, I always ask them, you know, which is better, to breathe or to philosophize? And everyone raised their hands that to breathe is better than to philosophize. And then I say to them, now, why do you say that to breathe is better than to philosophize? Well, if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else, right? Well, that shows that to breathe is before to philosophize in the second sense of before. It can be without philosophizing, but not vice versa. But that's not the fourth sense. So you're like saying, you know, Chaucer's better than Shakespeare because he came in the 14th century and Shakespeare came later. So it's obviously, you know, you're mixing up those senses, huh? But I know they're going to make that mistake. So, but you know yourself, you're able to do mistakes, right? But the slave boy then later on, Socrates, right, asked some questions and he recognizes his mistake, right? And in sacrifice. He's asked him more questions, and eventually the slave boy comes to see that the diagonal of the square would be the side of the square twice as big. So, the slave boy has the ability to be mistaken about how to double a square, and his ability to know how to double a square, right? But is it two different abilities or powers of his soul whereby he... Isn't these, right? No. It's the same ability. It's his reason, right? Which is able to be mistaken and able to know the truth. And he goes, in this case, from one to the other, right? Now, he's not knowing the truth and mistaken at the same time. Now, more often, I suppose, people go from being mistaken to knowing. Well, sometimes they know, and then someone deceives them, and then they're all of a sudden mistaken, right? And so I give this student a sophisticated argument, right? And they start denying what they already know, right? They're able to be mistaken, right? But it's really one and the same ability, right? Well, now, to know is good, and to be mistaken is bad, right? Which is better, to know or the ability to know? Yeah. But a sign of that is that the ability to know, in a way, is also the ability to be mistaken. So it seems to be, what, closer to the bad, right? Than to be actually knowing, right? Okay? So this is the way Aristotle is showing that. But if you misunderstand this, you might think, well, Aristotle thinks that act can be just as much bad as, what? Good, right? Okay? There can be a bad act, just like there's a good act, right? But maybe, strictly speaking, bad fundamentally is not an act at all. It's not being at all. It's not being, right? You and I, for example, are able to be blind, right? Okay? And if you fall into, what's his name there, King Lear? The Duke there has them blinding, right? Right there, big, huh? But now, if you went from being able to be blind, as you are now, to being actually blind, right? Does that mean to be an actualization? No. Strictly speaking? No. We might, by kind of metaphorical lightness, say this, right? Okay? I was able to be blind, right? And then, after they put my eyes out at the thing, right? I was actually blind, right? But, strictly speaking, is that an actualization of something? No. I'm really losing something, right? Right? Okay? It's a little bit like, you know, when you say, use the word has, right? We might say that someone has blindness, right? Or someone has ignorance, right? But, in a strict sense, do you have something when you're ignorant? Or is ignorance, strictly speaking, a not having? A not having something you're able to have, and maybe should have, right? And blindness is not really something you have, but, strictly speaking, it's not having something you're able to have, and should have. You see that? Okay? So, you've got to be careful about that kind of a metaphorical use of the word, huh? Okay? Well, it's kind of struck by, I have to check the Greek there, but as I say, the Latin was, in St. Paul there, that Adam is the forma, the form of the future, right? And he's referring to what? Adam, in a way, being, in a way, like Christ, you see? But Adam, in regard to sin, still like Christ, in regard to redemption, right? There's a kind of irisality of Adam, right? We all contract, you might say, original sin through Adam, right? Through one man, this came through. And then we're all, in some way, redeemed through one man, Christ, right? Okay? It's almost like saying, you and I are alike, because you emptied the mug, and I, what? Filled it, right? Hmm? You've poured it all out, and I filled it all out. In some way, you're a form of your theory. You see what I mean? So, even St. Paul's, you know, speaking that way a bit, huh? Okay? Tom is explaining it all. Okay, so in the second paragraph in page 12, then he's drawing the conclusion, right? It's necessary also that in bad things, the end and the act is worse than the ability. But notice, you've got to be very careful. He's speaking there kind of, what? Metaphorically. Metaphorically, yeah. Yeah. For it's the same that is able to be both contraries. But now in the third paragraph, right, he's starting to go back to what the bad really is, strictly speaking. And this has to be expanded upon, huh? But if you know what we read a long time ago, I guess. We read the first book of natural hearing, the first book of the physics. And Aristotle takes up matter, form, lack of form, right? And there you begin to see more clearly that bad is a, what? A lack, right? None being in the sense of a lack. Now, what's the difference between saying, for example, that the stone does not see? This is a simple negation, right? Okay? In saying that the man is blind, huh? Well, this is merely the game, right? Seeing of the stone, huh? But blind is not merely saying the man, what? Does not see, right? But this is a none being of sight. In the subject, act by nature to have sight. And that should have sight. And when it should have sight, right? Do you see that? Okay. Strictly speaking, is this piece of chalk ignorant? You can say this piece of chalk doesn't know what it's doing. It doesn't know at all, right? Okay. But strictly speaking, this piece of chalk is not ignorant, huh? Because ignorance is more than just the none being of knowledge, right? Ignorance is a none being, the none existence of knowledge in a subject, right? Able to have knowledge, and especially when it should have the knowledge, right? Okay. Do you see that? And that's very important to go back to, you know, the axiom about being an enemy, right? And I usually quote Hammond there, right? To be or not to be. That is the question, right? But it's a question because you can't both be and not be, and you must be one or the other. Okay? Now, if you have a simple negation, contradictory, everything is going to be one or the other. Either you know, or you do not know. There's no other alternative, huh? But, if you take not the contradictory of to know, but the lack, the privation. Lack is English word, privation is the Latin word. Is everything either know or is ignorant? This piece of chalk doesn't know, but it's not ignorant, either. See the difference? To know. and not to know are contradictories, right? But to know and to be ignorant different kind of opposition. Castile has a chapter there on the four kinds of opposites in the categories and he has a chapter on that in the fifth book of wisdom, right? Okay? There's contradictories and then there's the having and the lack, right? And then there's contraries and then there are relatives, huh? Okay? But you know, the contraries have not only a common subject but a common genus, huh? Virtue and vice are both habits, right? Okay? But sight and vice are not both powers, no. They're not a common genus but they have a common subject, right? Okay? So not everything either has sight or is blind, right? Strictly speaking. But only those things which are by nature apt to have sight. and shouldn't have sight. Then they either have sight or they're blind. So a man either has sight or he's blind. This mug is neither, right? Strictly speaking, huh? Okay? Now Aristotle's position about the bad there is not that the bad is none being, right? But it's a lack, right? Okay? So there's nothing bad about this glass, this mug here, not seeing it. There's nothing bad about this piece of chalk not knowing, right? But there is something bad maybe about my students being ignorant. And there's something bad about the dog with a man being blind, right? Do you see? So you got to say that, you know, Gustin in a way is kind of using a hyperbity there when he says that sin is nothing. And the man who sins becomes nothing. But he wants to emphasize the fact that the root there is a kind of none being, right? But to be more precise you've got to realize that it's a none being called lack, huh? Okay? That's what Aristotle says now in the next passage. It is clear therefore that the bad does not exist apart from things. For the bad is after ability by nature. You couldn't have blindness unless you had something able to have sight. Okay? So because this cup is not able to have sight by nature it can't have that badness we call blindness, right? That's just something that you or me or the dog or the cat you could have, right? See? So you shouldn't be disturbed by the fact that you're not God, right? That's renegation, right? It's not information or lack. You're not not having something you should have. I mean, you know, being God you're not that thing you should be. Okay? So go back a little bit to the natural philosophy there. Aristotle is pointing out in natural philosophy that Plato should distinguish between matter and lack of what? Form. Okay? The Platonists kind of confuse the two, right? Okay? Now you could say that Anaxagoras in a way confuses matter and form because he falsely imagines everything that is in the ability of matter to be actually in the matter. Okay? So he's confusing matter and form and Sarah Stout shows many difficulties in the position of Anaxagoras. Now the Platonists realize that matter and form are something different, right? But now when you distinguish in your mind matter from form then you think of matter as being without form, right? Okay? And therefore you have to confuse matter with its very what? Formlessness, huh? Okay? And you see a little bit of indescent sometimes in someone's works a little confusion about this, you know? When he's talking about the first matter, you know? If I could say it's a something that is nothing he says, right? Or nothing that is something that's what I would say. You know? Okay? Well, Aristotle reasons from a common opinion that he and Plato share about form, right? And the common opinion that Plato and Aristotle share is that form is something godlike and something good and something desired and this is a very profound understanding of what form is. As we've seen a little bit already God is going to be your what? Act, right? Now since form is an act then it's Godlike, huh? In a way that matter is not. Matter is ability not act, huh? That's why Thomas recounts your opinion of David and Ant who identified God with the first matter, right? Thomas says he most stupidly taught. You can see it's a stone even closer, right? It's a stone more actual than the first matter. So you're going you're saying that the pure act is the pure ability, right? It couldn't be further away. So he's not gratuitous in insulting David and Ant he's saying what the truth is, right? He most stupidly taught. Now since the act of the thing is perfection of the thing, right? Then it's something good and therefore desirable, right? Well then Tom Aristotle points out if you compare matter and lack of form to form you could say that matter is perfected by form, right? And he's a very concrete way of speaking here saying you could say that matter desires or wants form. its order to form is its good its perfection but if the lack of form were to want form you would want its own what? Destruction, right? It doesn't make any sense but the lack of form being opposed to form would seem to be something what? Bad if form is something good, right? Okay? But the matter is not bad because it is ordered to form it's perfected by form I may recall that when we in order to this argument we mentioned how Augustine when he after his conversion and after he began to refute the Manichaeans the Manichaeans thought that matter was what? Evil, right? And if you identify matter in lack of form you're going to make matter something bad Okay? But Augustine used the same argument against the Manichaeans that Aristotus uses here against the Platonists As far as we know independently of Aristotus you can know Aristotus physics So in the day that Turabodi on nature of the good contra Manichaeus Augustine says matter being capable form is also good not as good as form but also good but the lack of form is what is bad being opposed to form But there you get kind of the hint that lack is really basically what the bad is And what is lack well it's not non-being period it's non-being in a subject able right to have something It's a non-being of an act you're able to have and should have and that's true of not just bore evil but any kind of badness right Pianos ought to tune right Doesn't have something it should have right you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you taste something, it lacks something you know, the cook says somebody says, right? it needs a little bit of this, a little bit of that, right? okay well, that's bad the way it is, right? see so that's what Aristotle says it is clear therefore that the bad does not exist apart from things, but it is after ability by nature now this is going to be a reason why we say that God in no way can be bad especially looking before and after there has to be an ability for some act, right? you have to be capable of some act that you should have, but you don't have, right? you probably have something bad, right? when God has no ability to be deprived of the act it should have God is pure act so you can syllogize from God being pure act and from what Aristotle says there it's impossible for there to be anything bad in God you have to have some ability for some act in God, right? that was deprived of the act it should have it could have it should have, right? but there's no ability in God to be actualized there's no ability in God that has been actualized, right? none of this passive ability of God is pure act, right? okay and that goes back to what we showed earlier, right? that act, simply speaking is before ability, right? because what goes through ability to act does so because of something already in act the ability to be actual can't give itself the act it doesn't have that'd be a contradiction, right? you have to have what it doesn't have to give itself what it doesn't have so what goes through ability to act the ability that is actualized does so by reason something already in act that points to the way that the first cause therefore must be what? yeah yeah yeah yeah pure act you know what's beautiful about this, you know like Aristotle says in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics when he's showing what human happiness truly is with the truth he says all things harmonize, right? everything fits together, right? okay now it's kind of interesting here because in the premium to wisdom beginning of book one here at the metaphysics Aristotle showed that the end or goal of our mind is to know the first cause okay and you can see our mind naturally wants to know why, right? and the question why is answered by knowing the cause, right? but if the cause is the kind of cause that has a cause the mind wants to know the cause of the cause so I hit you because I'm angry with you, right? but then anger is the cause of my hitting you but anger is the kind of cause that has a cause, right? okay or the insurgents are blowing us up because they hate us, I guess so the hate is the cause of the doingness, maybe but hate is the kind of cause that has a cause why do they hate us? okay well then as we show in the second book of wisdom not every cause has a cause there's going to be a first cause in each of the four kinds of cause so just as our mind wants to know why if the cause has a cause it wants to know the cause of the cause and it continues until it gets to the first cause so you develop that the end of our knowledge knowledge is a knowledge of the first cause but now in the beginning of the first book about the soul Aristotle develops another criterion you might say for what would be the end of our knowledge because he argues there and in the beginning of the parts of animals where he's even more precise knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge okay you could say what's most essential to knowledge is what you know so knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge and from that you can reason out that a knowledge of the best thing is the what best knowledge right now since the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end right you could say the end of our knowledge must be a knowledge of the best thing right so so you have very good reason to think that the end of our knowledge is a knowledge of the first cause you also have a very good reason to say that the end of all of our knowledge must be a knowledge of the best thing now if the first cause is also the best thing then all things harmonize right together it all fits together right but if the first cause is not the best thing right now you've got what schizophrenia right you can't put it together you can't put how to dump it together now the evolutionary humanists right and general materialists they make a mistake about what the first cause is and the kind mistake they make is a mistake of mixing up what is so simply right and what is not so simply right the same kind of mistake that what Mino makes in the middle of the dialogue right and Socrates makes it he tries to respond to that okay but Aristotle showed and saw the distinction that in the thing that goes from ability to act ability is before act right but since it goes from ability to act by reason something already in act simply you could say act is before ability but they're thinking that what is before in some way is before simply and therefore they're thinking that the first thing must be most in ability in a passive sense right that it must be the first matter the first matter is right but now if the first cause wasn't the first matter it would be the least perfect and now you can't put the two together anymore they clash right because there's a mistake somewhere right okay but when Aristotle sees that act is simply before ability in time right and in being you could say causality and therefore the first cause must be pure act right and when he saw that act is better right than ability and therefore what is pure act must be the best thing everything fits together perfectly right but for the moderns they're lost you see they can't they can't put these two together right the first cause is not the best thing so it's the end of our mind you've got schizophrenia right two different last ends huh and going different directions too it's beautiful it comes out so naturally here right I haven't seen the text where Aristotle puts it together the way I was just putting it together but if you think back about what he shows in the premium to the 14 books right that the the